Dr. Tabatha Barber describes a postpartum patient who wanted divorce six weeks after giving birth while breastfeeding on a progestin-only pill. Her testosterone was essentially zero. Barber suggests the hormone crash, not depression, drove the mood changes and emotional withdrawal.
Depression and anxiety—I saw that all the time in my postpartum patients. I remember one woman in particular; she was at her six weeks checkup, and she just wanted to divorce her husband. And this was a woman who was in her twenties, and she loved her husband. They were like the most beautiful little couple, but it was their second baby, and she was like, "I don't want to look at him. I don't want to touch him. I make him sleep." in the living room. And I was just like, so dumbfounded. Like, what happened? He's been at all the appointments. Like, they're so happy. And something inside of me realized, okay, she's breastfeeding. She's on the quote unquote mini pill, which is progestin only because you can't have estrogen when you're breastfeeding. And I just thought, we should check your testosterone level. And I was like, okay, don't do anything drastic. Just Don't even talk to your husband until we get this level back, because I'm really curious. And she had like zero testosterone, and I just— something inside me knew that this was contributing to the way that she was feeling. And most doctors would have just called it depression, given her Zoloft, and sent her on her way.
